Temulawak (Wild Ginger) Indonesian property patented by the United States, What is the work of the Minister of Health?

Active ingredient of ginger for the drug lever, anticancer, and heart patented foreign parties in the United States. Wild Ginger is a plant species native to Indonesia and, if used as an active ingredient of commercial drugs, should be the division of benefits.

"It's part of biopiracy (piracy of genetic resources) that should be benefit sharing or distribution of its benefits," said Chairman of the Indonesian Association of Doctors Medical Herbs (PDHMI) Hardhi Pranata, Tuesday (19/10), at the International Conference of Plant Medicines held 19 to 21 October 2010 in Building Agency for the Assessment and Application of Technology (BPPT), Jakarta.

Hardhi said third active ingredient herbal remedies from ginger (Curcuma xanthorrhiza) that since the last two or three years the company manufactured the drug in Indonesia and has been circulating in the market. The company was bound from the United States patent application.

"The price of herbal medicines is now 1,000 times more expensive than the drugs with the same raw material that is actually a long time also produced in the country," said Hardhi.

Herbal medicine produced by other countries with raw materials from Indonesia have shown increasing interest in the world trend towards herbal medicine, but Indonesia is not ready to protect their genetic resources.

"The trend back to natural medicine began to demand and as many as 12 hospitals were successfully encouraged to open a clinic herbal medicine," said Hardhi.

Head of Research and Development of Medicinal Plants and Traditional Medicines in the Health Ministry said Beau Yuning Prapti, is still pursued saintifikasi herbal program to provide scientific evidence for the content or the content of herbal medicine.

"Saintifikasi is related to the provision of standard herbal medicine to the patient, but at the same achievement standards herbal ingredients used," said Belle.

Currently circulating about 3,000 herbal medicinal products in Indonesia. According to Bayer, only a small fraction that has been clinically proven through trials in humans and is expressed as fitofarmaka.

Deputy Head of BPPT Agro Technology and Biotechnology Listyani Wijaya said, the current Food and Drugs Supervisory Agency (BPOM) simply stated as many as five types of herbal medicine as fitofarmaka, namely herbal medicines for immunomodulatory or immune function, hypertension, rheumatism, diarrhea, and especially male stamina.

Hardhi said, in 2007, President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono has instructed that the herbal medicine used to treat patients by doctors. However, it must be admitted to the difficulty of standards for doctors to prescribe these herbal medicines.

Saintifikasi process herbs, according to Hardhi, now strongly support the three principles of healing the patient, namely the right dose, right time, and proper patient.

"Saintifikasi medicinal herbs not only supports the use of preventive or prevention alone, but also can be used for curative or healing," said Hardhi.

Bayer said the production of herbal medicine is still often face sustainability problems of raw materials. However, some farmers actually herbal raw material manufacturers often complain about, the materials produced are not always absorbed by the market. Indonesia Today